Friday, May 29, 2015

Scranimal Island
is where you will find
the fragrant RHINOCEROSE,
the cunning BROCCOLIONS.
And if you are really, really lucky
and very, very quiet,
you will spot
the gentle, shy PANDAFFODIL

YES! Prelutsky and Sis are at it again in this crazy mash-up
of animals and vegetables. Come along as Sis illustrates a fantastic journey of
two intrepid young adventurers through an extraordinary land fresh from
Prelutsky's imagination.

Friday, May 22, 2015

My selection is "In The Sea" by
David Elliott; illustrated by Holly Meade.

Elliot
combines simple rhymes and rhythms with a sophisticated use of language to
delight young readers and listeners alike. Elegant descriptions of both familiar and
unusual creatures introduce the audience to the denizens of the deep.

The
Sea Horse

See
the sea horse in the sea.

Where
else would the sea horse be?

For
though it's dainty as a wish,

the
sea horse is, you see, a fish.

Meade
translates the word pictures into marvelous woodcut prints that beautifully
convey the mystery and motion of the ocean.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Welcome to Writers Wednesday!Award-winning author Tim Myers shares his thoughts and experiences here along with an enlightening look at his book Rude Dude's Book of Food.Tim's book was reviewed here for Nonfiction Monday.

Tell us something about you as a
writer?

When
did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

When I was a kid, I wasn't much
interested in school, and mine wasn't a reading family, so I'd never had even a
single thought about writing.But for
some reason, when my sixth-grade teacher, a nun, gave us an essay for homework,
I wrote a poem--I have no idea why.The
day after we turned the homework in she asked me to stay back when the other
students went out to recess.I was shaking
in my boots, afraid I'd get in "big trouble" since I hadn't followed
directions.To my amazement, she praised
my poem and encouraged me to write more, which I did.For me, everything began there.One teacher, one eleven-year-old, one brief conversation.You never know when you might find yourself
in a catalytic moment.

How
does your career as a writer influence other areas of your life or vice versa?

I love this question--because this,
for me, is at the heart of being a writer.Writing has made me a much better and happier person, and in any number
of ways.For one thing, a writer has to
learn how to truly pay attention to the world, which is a precious gift--and
writing continually encourages me to pay attention in that deep and revealing
way.For another, writing about an issue
or idea can be powerful in helping you to clarify your own thoughts and
opinions, not to mention in waking you up to the true importance of the
topic.Writing also extends my emotional
life, inspiring me not only to live more fully but also to understand others
better, to "peer into" their lives, as it were.And I can't say enough about the pure
pleasure of using my imagination, my reasoning powers, not to mention language,
on a daily basis.Art to me is one of
the highest forms of play known to humanity--and I love to play.

What do you
do when you are not writing?

I love music and have been writing
songs for decades, and for a while now I've been performing in songwriter
competitions.I also love
sports--especially basketball--and I work out regularly.My wife and I love to ride bikes together,
and we've found wonderful bike trails around the Bay Area.I also do visual art when I can, and I love
great movies and TV shows, and I love to hike.And I'm a storyteller, so I do that whenever I can too.What am I leaving out?Ah--eating at some of the great restaurants
around the Bay.Going to museums.

Let's talk about the book.

Briefly,
what is the book about?

Rude
Dude's Book of Food is a history of some of the most popular foods in the
world, like chocolate, hamburgers, and noodles.But it's told in the silly and slangy style of the character Rude Dude,
and it's filled with stories, jokes, amazing facts, and the like.And somewhere within all that it also has
things to say about healthy food choices and food culture in a globalizing
world.

What
inspired you to write Rude Dude's Book of
Food?

I was itching to write a full-length
book (my busy life doesn't always allow that), and had sent what I thought of
as a picture-book manuscript to an editor.She liked A History of the World
from a Hamburger-Lover's Point of View but rejected it, suggesting I turn
it into a chapter book about other popular foods too.I thought that was a great idea, and I also
loved the idea of writing in a particular voice, especially a very free and
humor-oriented one.So I plunged in.It won't come as a surprise to any writer
that, ironically enough, that same editor also rejected the finished book.

What would you like
readers to take from it?

I was a classroom teacher for 14 years and a teacher
educator for 20--I believe strongly that learning can be a fascinating and joyous adventure.But it isn't always presented to young people
that way, and I find it especially ironic that history, the story of all
humanity, is often turned into something dull when it enters the
classroom.So I wanted to present all
the exciting and weird and interesting aspects of food history, as well as to
share the fascination of history in general.But I also want readers to learn something of the marvelous complexities
of food history, and how that stuff on our plates--which we often put into our
mouths without a second thought--is actually often a culmination of long, involved
historical processes.And of course I
want kids to start thinking about food in a more conscious way so they can
learn to make healthier choices.I
suppose I could sum up my whole goal in the phrase "learning fun."

What excites you about your current projects?

--I'm
working on a fantasy novel series for adults and young adults, and I love the
world-building involved, as well as the opportunity to address certain
real-world issues through fantasy.And
of course there's the simple, endless delight of telling a story.I'm also working on a lot of other smaller
things--for example, I've just had a book of adult poetry accepted, a
collection of poems inspired by stories.And that's a thrill for me, since story and poetry are two of my great
loves.

Share something about your writing process.

Where did you get your ideas for this
book?

The first impulse came from nothing
more than a sense of a narrator's voice, one that was funny and slangy and
quite honest about its devotion to cheeseburgers.Then, at that editor's suggestion, I chose
popular foods that I happen to love (this created strong motivation for writing
but also made me hungry a lot).Then I
did a lot of research, which was a blast.

What
characters, themes or ideas attract you the most?

So many!I've got 10 four-drawer file cabinets filled
with folders in which I collect ideas etc. for particular books I want to
write.There's a wide range, and I do
poetry, fiction, and nonfiction--I'm kind of all over the map.I'm often drawn to what I call
"transrealist" story, that is, fantasy, science fiction, folklore,
myth, etc.But I also love more
conventional "realist" fiction, and I do plenty of straight-up
argument, making a claim and trying to back it up.And I write for all ages, so that adds
another wrinkle.The themes I'm
interested in are too many to list here.

What part
of writing is your biggest challenge?

Although I've written lots of
fiction, I've never written a novel before, so my current fantasy novel series
is a challenge in terms of going long distance.I'm especially concentrating on characterization, since I think that's
something I need to develop.

What book(s)/author(s) have influenced your writing and how?

Some of my
favorites are Ursula LeGuin and the religion scholar Huston Smith.I love Kipling's Kim, and I could rattle off a lot more; when I read both Bellow's Herzog and Eliot's Middlemarch, I was so moved and learned so much that when I
finished each book, I turned back to page one and read each one through again.And I especially love the poetry of Yeats,
Rilke, and Whitman.Oh, and I was only
an adult writer until the day I read a particular picture book to my young
sons.When I closed the book, I gasped,
thinking, You mean you can do THAT in a
CHILDREN'S book? In the space it took to read the book--no more than five
minutes--I became a children's writer.That book was Where the Wild
Things Are.

Being both
entertaining and educational is a skill that many teachers struggle with when
they attempt to write for children. Your
background as an educator is apparent in the opening chapter on page two when
you remark that history can be boring if you don't have the whole story.And on page nine you acknowledge your use of
slang, then offer readers an explanation and encourage them to master the use
of standard English. What was your strategy for striking a successful balance
between those two goals throughout the book?

That's
a great question, I think, because it gets specific about how one goes
about making a desirable principle actually work in a practical way.The first step for me is having learned to
love history, and I think that comes to you through two things:finding works that present history in its
full human variety and power, and then finding in yourself a "vision"
of the human endeavor.So many of us
don't understand that the mere presence of humans on this planet is a miracle,
an astonishment.And then when you look
at what individuals and particular cultures have achieved, and when you get a
sense of how such things always happen in the complicated circumstances of
individual lives, you start not only to feel part of this huge endless river of
human culture but also to understand that it's always a story, always has its
up's and down's, its great demands and pressures as well as its triumphs.By its very nature, I think, human culture is
an adventure.

But there's
a second component too, which I learned through teaching and parenting.You have to learn how kids "work,"
so to speak--how they feel, for example, and the developmental realities they
live with.If you learn this, you can
begin coming up with effective ways to communicate with young readers--and then
ways to motivate them.The single most
important thing here may simply be believing that motivation is crucial, and
that the hard work you put into creating motivation is worth it.One thing many of my education students
didn't fully understand is that there's always a way to motivate a group of
students--you just have to find it.

And when you
do--the pay-off is enormous.

What important experience
in your writing career would you like to share with this audience?

What I love the most about writing, as I've said, is how
it lets me live a fuller, more intense life--not to mention a smarter and wiser
life.I'm constantly reading and
writing.And I find it worth mentioning
that I do a fair amount of my thinking and creating in my dreams at night.I record my dreams on a regular basis, and
they often make their way into my writing.I think everyone should pay attention to their dreams, which, although
they're often silly or incoherent, can also be powerful messages we send to
ourselves.

But I bring this up here as just one example of how books
can help super-charge our hearts and our brains, to the point where I'm even
thinking and making up stories, etc. in my dreams.And you don't have to be a writer to do this,
to have this kind of intensity in your life--reading alone can have this effect
on you!

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Myers combines food, fun, and facts in this very readable collection of
stories about some of our favorite foods such as chocolate, hamburgers, and
noodles.Myers indulges his passion for
education by offering young readers (the intended audience is middle grade) a look
at history through the medium of the food we eat. Along the way he deftly
peppers the text with delicious bits of history. The writing is clever, the casual,
slangy voice rich with humor even as it coaxes children into a greater
awareness of their food choices.

Smiley's cartoon style illustrations are a perfect pairing with the text.

Be sure to check back on May 20th for a Writer's Wednesday interview with Tim Myers.

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REVIEW SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

As an author, I know how personal the writing experience is and I understand how much hard work and heart goes into the creation of a story. I only publish positive reviews so I am very selective when it comes to choosing books to appear on this site.

Before making an inquiry please look at books already reviewed here to get a feel for the types of books that interest me.

To submit a book for review: email your query or press release to jsquiresbooks@ca.rr.com. Include the following information: Cover jpeg, Title, Author, ISBN, Publisher, publication date, number of pages, genre. a brief (about 100 words) summary, book awards or reviews, author bio (50 words or less), and contact information: email, website, blog.

Due to the volume of review requests that I receive, I only respond to inquiries that interest me. If you don't hear from me within 30 days, it is probably safe to assume I won't be in touch.

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About Me

I began my career writing for regional and national magazines then shifted my interest to children's books. My picture book, "The Gingerbread Cowboy," published by HarperCollins, was the Arizona Governor's 2007 First Grade Book.
I belong to SCBWI and Women Writing the West.

Author Visits

Coming Events

2018

January 13 Celebration of Local Authors - 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM Old Town Newhall Library, 24500 Main Street Santa Clarita, CA. This is always a fun event with dozens of authors in many different genres on hand to introduce you to their work, share their experiences in panel discussions, and answer questions. Come discover a new favorite author or book!

February 3 Simi Valley Library Annual Book Festival. I'll be the featured author. I'll offer a presentation, and books will be available to purchase and have signed. More details to follow.